No, I didn’t much like Vista (I’m not alone: a recent Infoworld survey suggests a startling 35% of its readers (corporate IT types) ‘de-upgraded’ their current model PCs from Vista to Windows XP).

I found Vista cloying and cluttered – a tarted-up version of XP that demanded more RAM and CPU power to run acceptably, yet managed to get in my way more than even XP.

My overall impression of Vista was of an operating system collapsing under its own weight.

But Linux was too hard, right? Too arcane? Too hard to install?

Not exactly.

Four long posts later – and despite one rough patch involving an internal modem and some media player issues – I’ve been running my business atop Ubuntu Linux for more than 60 days.

The bottom line? Ubuntu Linux is fast. It’s reliable. The interface is clean (if not a little spare). And plenty of Open Source software is freely available.

Simply put, I like it.

Is Ubuntu Linux better than XP or Vista?

That’s impossible to say; your preferences will depend on your definition of “better.”

If you live and breathe Microsoft Word – or use any of the other “industry standard” software packages – then Linux could print money and it wouldn’t be “better.”

To those of us living on a steady diet of OpenOffice, text editors, image editors, podcasts, a browser and a few utilities, it’s a compelling option.

In truth, the decision to use an open source system like Ubuntu Linux is more a philosophical question than a “logical” one.

More software is available for Windows, and it’s a safer choice.

On the other hand, no Linux operating system will ever download – largely without your knowledge – a “validator” designed to check and see if your OS is pirated.

There’s also a question of flexibility.

Don’t like your current flavor of Linux? Want to try a stripped version on an old laptop?

Feel free.

(See? That philosophical thing again.)

Real World Questions – and Answers

I think Ubuntu Linux is simply more productive (for me).

Is it better than XP? Being as Microsoft is no longer developing Windows XP (or selling licenses), then yes – it is.

Is it better than Vista?

That depends. Vista is smoother than XP. It’s also far more cluttered and dense than Linux.

A lot of the animosity directed at Vista came because users tried to upgrade XP machines. And ran into problems, often with hardware drivers.

Not surprisingly, those same issues dog Linux.

When manufacturers ship a PC with Vista or Linux already installed, those issues simply disappear. But there, of course, lies the hell of it.

Very few manufacturers ship computers with Linux installed (Dell will, but only a few models). So almost every Linux installation goes on unknown hardware.

If more manufacturers offered Linux as an option – and passed along the savings – much of the Linux reputation for difficulty would simply fade away.

And yes – market share would almost certainly grow beyond the current 2%-3% (desktops – Linux server market share is an order of magnitude higher).

The Good. And the Bad.

Here’s a story with a happy ending: I was going to re-format the hard drive on my old XP-based desktop, then give it away (I never liked that machine under XP).

On a whim, I installed Ubuntu instead of XP (again, without a hitch).

Surprise.

It runs faster. More reliably. And avoids all the machine’s formerly-quirky hardware issues.

No twice-a-day re-boots needed. No slowdowns after I opened and closed a bunch of applications. No browser lockups. No disappearing CD drives.

Suddenly, it’s a brand-new desktop.

Are all endings in Ubuntu Linux this happy?

Sadly, no. It suffers some video issues. Install it from the CD, and you need to download a special library to play commercial DVDs, and its streaming video performance can be spotty.

Drivers for a lot of hardware aren’t available for Linux, though I haven’t had any real problems.

More importantly, all those issues would go away on a PC shipped with Linux installed, and they weren’t too hard to solve anyway (though I got the impression the Linux world wants to pretend they don’t exist).

My final word?

Ubuntu Linux is everything Linux is supposed to be – except really, really hard to install or use.

The basic interface is simple, and anyone with Mac or Windows experience would find their way around pretty quickly.

It runs into trouble with some video and audio formats, and suffers from a dearth of software choices in odd areas (contact management is a little thin, as is the choice of blog editors).

That said, it also runs like a pickup truck, updates automatically (nicer than Windows), and features a “package” management system that makes installing and uninstalling software a far easier job than in XP or Vista.

It’s running on all three of my PCs (Vista is still bootable on my laptop), and I have no plans to remove it.

Test-flying Ubuntu is easy; it even installs as software within your Windows system (dual-boot), and uninstalls quickly if you don’t like it.

My clients couldn’t care less what’s running on my end. And – dare I suggest it – Microsoft Vista’s huge stumble out of the gate has given computer users a great, big, resource-hogging reason to look at alternatives.

One of them is the Mac (most are surprised to learn OSX is built atop Linux Unix). I haven’t touched on it because it’s tied to specific hardware, though Mac and Linux users might represent opposite ends of the non-Windows-using universe.

Still, the Mac is gaining market share at Microsoft’s expense, and – given my very positive experience with Ubuntu Linux – believe we could see the same thing occur on the PC side of the fence.

Can I squeeze another post out Ubuntu Linux? Maybe.

I’m developing some new work habits – and how writers get words on paper has always fascinated me – so look for a “What Linux has done to my writing process” post in a couple weeks.

Downloaded the photos from my digital card reader (easier than Windows), and edited them with Gimp image editing software (again, a winner – fast and powerful).

Then I added the photographs to the article (annoying; Scribefire would only add the image code half the time), and fired the article.

Which is when things got weird again.

Only one of the images (of eight) appeared on my article. And even weirder, replacing the first image in the WordPress editor solved the problem for all the photos.

While Scribefire is a nice product, it’s really strongest when doing quick cut & paste jobs from online sources. And it seems to suffer from odd bugs.

And while the photo failure shouldn’t be laid at the feet of Ubuntu, it’s clear the lack of a killer Linux blog editor still hampers my Ubuntu test – enough that I may look at running a Windows blog editor under Ubuntu’s Windows emulator (Wine).

My six year-old HP laptop has never failed me. But lately, it has been making me wait.

It’s running Windows XP, and even after a clean install – once its 512K MB of RAM was burdened with service packs, security updates, anti-viral software and a modern browser – it becomes the Little Laptop That Can’t.

At least not quickly.

It’s not the end of the world; I run my company on a fast new laptop. But I keep the HP upstairs, so I can surf and check email without heading downstairs to my office.

Was I screwed? Time to shell out for another laptop?

Maybe. But when you’ve got nothing to lose, you’ve got nothing to lose by trying something new. I went looking for a faster alternative. And found it.

The Linux Story

Linux is an operating system that runs many of the servers on the Web (this blog’s server runs Linux).

Linux is also available for the desktop, yet it’s rarely found on the information worker’s PC (desktop market share has grown to just over 2%).

A free version of the age-old Unix operating system, Linux is considered an operating system for techies, scientists and cranks. It’s fast and powerful, but often labeled “user unfriendly.”

Installation was straightforward; I downloaded an Xubuntu CD image, burned a CD, and rebooted from the Xubuntu CD.

Expecting a painful confrontation with an extraterrestrial installation process, I was pleasantly surprised. Instead of indecipherable choices, I faced four installation options:

Install the Linux operating system over the old system (reformatting your drive and destroying all your old data)

Install Ubuntu in its own partition (it divides your hard drive into separate virtual disks; you decide which operating system boots at startup)

Install it on on your Windows disk (maintains all your Windows data and system; Linux runs a little slower)

Run it from the CD (quite slow, but you can test-drive the system without altering one byte on your Windows disk)

Because I didn’t care about maintaining my old Windows XP installation, I went with option #1.

And gritted my teeth.

This was where it was going to get messy.

This was where I was going to meet the Linux Monster head on.

This was… done already?

Installation went smoothly. Very smoothly.

The only holdup? The wireless card didn’t work, so I had to plug my laptop directly into my router. It connected immediately, and automatically downloaded the driver software for my wireless card.

Done. Finished.

Ready to compute.

In other words, installation was easy. Damned easy.

In 40 minutes, I was looking at the Xubuntu desktop, complete with open source (free) word processor (Abiword), spreadsheet (Gnumeric), Pidgin all-in-one IM software, and plenty other goodies.

Still, I’m a fan of OpenOffice (an open source, MS Windows Office equivalent), and installing it was a snap.

I simply ran the Package Manager, which automatically downloaded and installed software for me.

Fast. Simple. Easy.

What was I afraid of again?

With a little configuring (the browser had to download some non-open source plugins to run flash), my old laptop was once again a useful Web surfing tool.

It isn’t blazingly fast, but it is faster than when running XP, and Xubuntu handled my laptop’s limited memory far better.

The interface is clean and simple. Upgrades and updates are automatic. And yes, there was much rejoicing at the Underground.

The End of the Story?

Not quite. Running (and yes, enjoying) the streamlined version of Ubuntu forced me to ask the question: would I prefer the full-featured desktop version of Ubuntu to the copy of Windows Vista running on my business laptop?

I’ll be blunt. I don’t much like Windows Vista. It makes my fast new laptop run like my old slow desktop. In fact, it feels like little more than a slow, tarted-up version of Windows XP – and many of the interface “improvements” leave me scratching my head.

It doesn’t feel like an upgrade worth waiting years for. And I have zero interest in moving to the latest version of MS Office. In fact, my daily software set is already largely open source.

Wtih that in mind, was Ubuntu a faster, updated-more-often, better-designed choice for my everyday work computer? Was it possible to find out in a relatively painless fashion?

The Ubuntu Project: 30 Days of Linux

Turns out it was. I installed the full-blown glossy version of Ubuntu in a partition on my new Dell Inspiron laptop (total: two hours).

Most the software I wanted was already in place, but I quickly downloaded the few bits that weren’t (the big list looks like: OpenOffice, Firefox, Thunderbird, Evolution, Audacity, Kompozer, Scribus, Gimp, gTwitter).

Meanwhile, Vista – and all my old software – reclines on my hard drive, ready to boot if needed.

Like Morgan Spurlock of “30 days” fame, I’m going to live with Ubuntu Linux for the next month.

If I like it, I switch. If I don’t, Vista stays.

First Impressions

Ubuntu is faster than Vista. Not by a factor of several times, but noticeably faster.

The interface is (to my eye) cleaner. And I’m already using mostly open source software, which means I barely notice the switch.

There have been glitches.

Playing a standard commercial DVD wasn’t possible without messing with indecipherable command lines. It’s an easy fix, but it’s clumsy. And while there’s a lot of open source software available, Linux currently lacks a killer blog editor.

I loved Windows LiveWriter on Vista, but have been relegated to using the oddly designed ScribeFire (Firefox-based Java app) for blogging. (Don’t Linux people blog?)

I already miss some of the peripheral software available in Windows. Like the Twhirl Twitter editor and the Q10 “dark screen” text editor.

And moving contact data from my Windows PIM (Time & Chaos) and into Evolution (the open source equivalent of Outlook) has been a surprisingly painful experience.

Outside of the few glitches, I’ve enjoyed an easy move. And with Web-based software becoming more common, the application barriers to moving to Linux are going to come down (in most cases, they already have).

Of course, larger questions of availability, scalability, compatibility and even philosophy are at work here, and I’ll get into those during my month-long Ubuntu test.